On 3/22/2010 4:23 PM, Alexander Terekhov wrote:
Meaning that material originally licensed under the BSDL must
remain licensed under the BSDL (with just a few restrictions
imposed on binary-only form) and not hijacked by the GPL
Really? The Open Source Initiative says a BSD license looks like this
<http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.php>: Copyright (c)
<YEAR>, <OWNER> All rights reserved.
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
are met:
* Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. *
Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
* Neither the name of the <ORGANIZATION> nor the names of its
contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from
this software without specific prior written permission.
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS
"AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT
LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR
A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT
HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT,
INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING,
BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS
OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED
AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT
LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY
WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE
POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
So the only restriction on BSD-licensed code is that it retain the
copyright notice, not use the name of the organization for publicity,
include a disclaimer, and include these conditions on distribution.
Nothing in these conditions prevents a derivative work from being
relicensed under the GPL, since nothing in the GPL contradicts any of
these conditions.